1. Technical Field
This invention relates generally to generation of Internet content. More particularly, the invention relates to a method for flexibly, safely, robustly, and efficiently serving user interface pages composed of foreign content supplied by a third-party as well as local content supplied by a first party.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Presently, the Internet has established itself a main force of information communication and the world-wide Web has added new roles besides its originate purpose of sharing information. One of the new roles is to carry e-commerce, where commercial transactions are performed electronically through the world-wide Web over the Internet. The Web contents have also evolved from simple static Web pages written in Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) to dynamically generated Web pages via Web applications. Conducting e-commerce over the Web is enabled by the Web applications that allow end users to interact with the server that hosts the Web applications. Forms are often inserted to HTML pages to capture the input requests of the end user, and a server site application processes the requests, generates responses and returns responses, again in the format of HTML, to the end user.
However, the dynamic contents often require special development team to generate and maintain. Depending on the complexity of the content, it could also take quite long time to make the dynamic content available to the on-line community. Sometime it may be convenient and financially plausible to use Web contents and applications developed. As the requirement grows, more organizations are providing dynamic contents that other organizations can share and present to their own users. These dynamic contents may provide essential features such as user registration and authentication, or provide additional contents to be added to other organizations' own Web contents. These dynamic contents are often required be cobrandable, i.e. it should allow them to be configured to carry the logos or other brand content of parties which use them to present an impression of proprietary content to their own user.
The provider of the cobrandable dynamic Web contents is herein called a cobrandee and the party that uses the cobrandee's Web contents is herein called a cobrander.
The Web content page that contains both the cobrandee's contents and the cobrander's contents is herein called a cobranded Web content page. The cobrander's contents are herein all called cobranding contents.
When serving cobranded Web content pages, the provider of the cobrandable content provides the primary content, such as a news story, a network login form, etc. and other organization provides secondary cobranding content, such as a brand image and brand-specific Web site navigation elements.
The usual method for implementing cobranded pages is for the cobrandable-content-offering organization, the cobrandee, to define the overall page structure and layout, including predefining specific page locations into which categories of cobranding content are to be inserted. For example, the cobrandee may predefine a fixed-size spot for a cobrand image and another for some cobranding messaging. Then the cobranding organization, i.e. the cobrander, provides the contents for these cobranding locations. However, this approach is often unattractive to the cobrander because it typically would like to have full control over the page layout and structure.
What is desired is a technique for flexible, safe, robust, and efficient generation and serving of cobranded Web content pages. The technique should enable the cobrander to control the overall page structure and layout, provide context-sensitive cobrander contents, and control where the cobrandee's contents appears in the cobranded Web content pages. At the same time, the technique should enable the cobrandee to inspect the cobrander's contents and reject them if they violate the cobrandee's rules for allowable content, efficiently and robustly generate the completed cobranded Web content pages, and deliver the completed page to the end user.